HARWICH – It was 6 a.m., cold and gray in the commuter parking lot off Exit 10 and Tiffany Nicely Holleck, co-pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church and Peggy O'Connor, pastor of Pilgrim Congregational Church fretted that they had misjudged the timing of buses. No Boston-bound bus was waiting, no commuters were on hand.

But Holleck pulled a sign board out of the trunk of her car and she and O'Connor slipped into their clerical robes anyway.

“Kind of clumpy,” O'Connor said as she took the cover off a plastic tub and gently poked at the ink-black palm ashes, trying to break up a stubborn lump.

Holleck struggled with a felt tip pen that grudgingly gave up its frozen ink. She scratched out “Ashes To Go,” a word mash-up that intentionally smacked of the penitence of the first day of Lent and the convenience of take-out food.

“People are working. If they can't come in to church, why not come out to where the people are?” said Holleck.

The pastors of the two Harwich churches prayed together, then signed each other's forehead with a cross and the familiar words of God to Adam and Eve: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Ever since it was first tried in Chicago four years ago, the practice of giving out ashes on street corners and in parking lots on Ash Wednesday has spread across the country. On Wednesday, Holleck and O'Connor as well as the Rev. Judith Davis of Christ Church Episcopal in Harwichport set up ash stations at two supermarkets, a Dunkin' Donuts shop and the commuter lot at Exit 10.

Originating in the “sackcloth and ashes” motif that permeates the Old Testament signifying repentance, mourning and humility, Ash Wednesday gradually worked its way into the rituals of Christianity becoming associated with repentance. The palm leaves from the previous year's Palm Sunday services are burned the night before and sifted to produce the fine ash that is then mixed with a little oil.

But taking the message of mortality and repentance, along with a symbolic calligraphic cross on the forehead, to commuters, shoppers, and others who just wanted their latte might seem more ambush than service.

Not to school bus driver Lionel Ferris, who trudged across the commuter lot from his big yellow bus. His early morning schedule meant he had missed the Mass at his church and had just enough time for a brief prayer and the cross signed on his forehead before he had to leave on his route.

“I think this is as spiritual a moment as in church,” said Nicki Palmer of Dennisport, who went to the commuter lot for ashes because she had a work commitment that night and would miss her church service. “It shows sacrifice.”

Far more people came to be blessed later that morning at Dunkin' Donuts in Harwichport. Kathleen Hekking helped her mother Mae Hall, who walked slowly and tentatively with a cane, up onto the sidewalk.

“I'm a member of Holy Trinity (Catholic Church in West Harwich) but I couldn't get to Mass,” Hall explained to Holleck and O'Connor. A line formed outside the doughnut shop. The two pastors talked longer with some people, offering advice, or listening to someone unburden themselves of a problem.

The disconnect between what is considered private and public seemed to draw some people out of themselves, O'Connor said. Hands that made the sign of the cross also proved good at a dispensing consoling and comforting touch when needed.

“We're on the street but doing something private and intimate,” she said. “It's more likely they'll say, 'This is what's on my mind.'”

World War II veteran David Roberts, who's nearly 90 years old, read that ashes were being offered in front of Dunkin' Donuts and couldn't believe it. He thought it was good to see religious beliefs out on the street instead of confined to the church.